Sheikh Sahib may fear God, but as for me, I fear only the British.

Akbar Allahabadi offers a brilliant flash of wit and political satire in this couplet. While the pious Sheikh speaks of the fear of God and the afterlife, the poet dryly grounds the conversation in the brutal, everyday reality of British colonial rule. It is a sharp, humorous reminder of how immediate oppression and the struggle for survival can overshadow abstract pieties.